“There’s a man with a gun standing in my garden. I want something done about it.”

A beat of shocked silence met this and Molly sighed in exasperation. “Did you hear me? I said there’s a man in my garden “-

“Yes, Madam, I did hear. Can you give me your address, please and we’ll get someone right there.”

“Beldon Avenue, number twelve. Not that it is an avenue, you understand, it’s a cul de sac. I’m right at the end. The big house with the high hedges, right at the end. And my name is Mrs Chambers.”

Molly could hear the sound of a keyboard rattling and a woman’s voice checking details.

“Madam, are you sure he has a gun?”

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Molly exploded. “Young woman I have lived long enough and seen enough to know a gun when one is waved in my direction.”

This was a slight exaggeration. So far the young man in the garden had simply stood uncertainly, with the weapon slightly raised. Molly cursed the dusk and her own failing sight; had either been clearer she could have issued a more exact description.

“At you?” That last seemed to have got the call handler’s attention,” Molly noted with a degree of satisfaction. Sometimes one just had to overstate the case. It was the only way to get attention in this desperately hyperbolic times.

“Madam, do you believe yourself to be in immediate danger?”

“Young woman, I consider that to be a very stupid question. In my experience, and contrary to what so many idiots tend to believe, guns do not equal security.” “Please madam, if you could just “-

Mollie sighed. “My dear young lady, I’ve already made certain I’m not in his sight line. I’m upstairs in the front, that is the master bedroom. I have a clear view of him, but he not of me.”

“And are the doors and windows locked. Madam, there are officers on their way as we speak. They are just minutes away.”

“My dear,” Molly said with heavy irony. “Unless one lives in some kind of bunker, then the act of closing windows or locking doors will do little to stop a bullet.”

During the conversation she had moved back from the window and no longer had the young man in her view. She returned, now, swearing softly to herself in Swahili, a language she had always considered very suited to such a purpose.

“Madam? Mrs Chambers? Are you all right.”

“He’s gone,” Mollie said sharply. “He must have gone round to the back of the house while I was talking to you.”

“Officers will be with you very shortly,” the call handler said, though Mollie could hear the tension in her voice. That and a little bit of doubt.

She thinks I’m off my rocker, Mollie thought. She thinks I imagined the whole thing.

Had she locked her back door?

True, Mollie thought, if someone with a gun wanted to shoot off the lock, then there was little she could do to stop them, but if she’d been so forgetful as to leave the door undone and thereby made it easy for him , well then she really would feel foolish.

“I can hear the sirens,” she said.

“Good, that’s good, Mrs Chambers. Just hang in there for a couple of minutes more. Officers will be with you in no time at all.”

She could hear something else, Mollie thought as she turned from the window to face the bedroom door. The sirens were louder now, blanketing that smaller but unmistakable sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Mollie straightened, squared her shoulders and lowered the phone. Dimly, she could hear the young woman on the end of the line calling her name.

Slowly, the bedroom door opened and Mollie gazed upon the apparition that stood there. For a moment she was more puzzled than afraid, her senses telling her something impossible was happening.

“Oh,” Mollie said. “It’s you.”

Sirens so close now as the cars sped into the cul de sac. The sound of the young woman calling out her name. Then everything overwhelmed by the blast of the gunshot as the noise echoed and resounded through the house.